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Over The Next Hill
by Der Teufel

I've been trying to figure out why WW2 Online is such an obsession for me, and I think I've traced the origins.

In the early 80's, around the time I was 13, in the days when library computer labs were the only place you could see a computer, and an Apple II with 64k of RAM was one POWERFUL SOB, back in the day when TRON was the state of the art in computer graphics, in the day when ASCII war games like Midway ruled, and even before Mattel Intellivision's "immersive" B-17 Bomber, long before Silent Service, I had a dream about a game. I called it Zephyr's Cove and it was a text based Combat Adventure in the vein of Zork and those Choose Your Own Adventure novella's for kids, except on a MASSIVE, incredibly ambitious scale. It existed only in my mind and on scraps of paper I imagined it when I should have been doing my math homework.

In this game, two sides would square off against each other in a titanic struggle to dominate the land, sea and air of a vast landscape. You would start off choosing which side you wanted to fight for (the North or the South). You'd choose what branch of the military you wanted to be in (Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines). Then you'd choose what you'd do in that service (Fly a fighter, helicopter or bomber off a runway or carrier, drive a tank or truck, fight in the infantry or paratroopers, captain a sub or destroyer.) You'd go through basic training, and how you did would partly determine where you ended up, you'd meet some friends along the way, some would go on to fight beside you, others would follow their own paths. Many would die along the way, in far off battles you only heard about while drinking in the pub, or they'd die right along side you in a losing cause. The war would ebb and flow like a tide, mostly going well if you were successful, but sometimes not.

The virtual battlefield. A place where I could choose my place in the story, immerse myself with other players, become a part of it and change it's course through my actions and the actions of those around me. That is my dream. My expectations for WW2 Online are high, perhaps too high. The scope of what they seek to create is monstrous. The technology to create a persistent virtual battlefield exists, but barely. Does it exist in the realm of the average personal computer on today's infant internet? We shall see. At the very least, I take comfort in the fact that their are others out there with a similar dream, with the skills and will to conjure it. I will play on the virtual battlefield in my lifetime. Will it be in the year 2001? I don't know. If it's to be, I choose to be a truck driver for the French Army, May of 1940, in Alsace-Lorraine. Does anyone want to ride along with me and see what's over the next hill?